Here is my comment on the article. (It’s posted on the WSJ site, too.)
Your article notes that Agnes Scott’s consultant considers (yet-to-be-educated) students as “consumers” and your article notes that “…Prospective freshmen and their families…increasingly view themselves as consumers of a branded product…”.
Schools are more concerned in increasing the value of their brand – not as measured by the value of the education delivered but as measured by a ranking that measures things like “yield” – than they are on delivering education. Two of the greatest thinkers on higher education this country has ever produced noted the problems over three decades ago.
““…This shift from academic merit to student consumerism is one of the two greatest reversals of direction in all the history of American higher education…” Clark Kerr, former Chancellor of the Uniiv. of Cal. system and author of influential books on universities.
The following quotes are from David Riesman’s 1980 book “On Higher Education – The Academic Enterprise in an Era of Rising Student Consumerism”. David Riesman was coauthor of “The Lonely Crowd” and a great thinker.
““…I seek to alert readers to what is happening …as students turn from being supplicants for admission to courted customers…”
“…I aim to show that the “wants” of students to which competing institutions, departments, and individual faculty members cater are quite different from the “needs” of students…”
“…advantage can still be taken of [students] by unscrupulous instructors and institutions…Like any other interest group, the student estate often does not grasp its own interests, and those who speak in its name are not always its friends.”
“…Since students are so often misled in their choices, I have long encouraged federal as well as regional and state efforts to protect their rights…”
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